All your linkspam are belong to us (27 Sep 2013)

Fighting Back Against Online Misogyny: Review of Laurie Penny’s newly-released short e-book Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet. “The idea that this sort of hate speech is at all normal needs to end now. The Internet is public space, real space; it’s increasingly where we interact socially, do our work, organize our lives and engage with politics, and violence online is real violence. The hatred of women in public spaces online is reaching epidemic levels and it’s time to end the pretense that it’s either acceptable or inevitable.”

The Definitive Moffat and Feminism Post: Philip Sandifer writes on Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who and Feminism. “A misogynistic culture is going to produce misogynistic cultural artifacts. There’s always a background radiation of misogyny. And what we treat as feminist is usually more accurately described as works that manage to rise above that background radiation.”

Why Does Female Fandom Come in for Such Criticism?: Den of Geek post on how female-leaning fandom comes under misogynistic attack. “Fandom is supposed to be a positive thing, about celebrating something you enjoy, are entertained by and are passionate about. It’s not about sending up flares to attract a crowd of bullies who should know better.”

How to Avoid More Brogrammers Behaving Badly: Tech Crunch’s Alexia Tsotsis discusses anti-harassment policies at tech conferences. “There seems to be a gap here between the solutions to the rampant unsafe spaces of the tech community, and their actual implementation.”

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4 thoughts on “All your linkspam are belong to us (27 Sep 2013)”

That post about Moffat is infuriating, and I’m really surprised to see it linked here without critical comment. Sarah Jane Smith is dismissed as not feminist enough, while Clara and Amy are held up as The Most Feminist Companions. It glosses over the very real criticisms of Moffat and talks about how feminist fandom attacks the most feminist shows and creators — like Buffy and Whedon!

I don’t want this to devolve into a “whose era was better” thing, but I completely agree with you. This article holds up as feminist a lot of really bad things about Moffat’s Who. Presenting River and the Doctor as a healthy relationship between equals? No, the show tries to sell it as romantic, but it is blatantly abusive, particularly in The Angels Take Manhattan. Saying that it’s “the point and the trap” that Clara turns out to be an ordinary girl who does something extraordinary that leads to her own mystery? No, if the show tells you that her character is secondary to her mystery and erases her memory when she begins to progress, then it’s telling you that she is not important as a person. Nice try on the “feminists ignore Rory because he’s so perfect,” but a lot of fans I know are not okay with his occasional fits of Nice Guy Syndrome. Plus, we’re sick of all the sexual assault played for laughs.

Ugh, just skimmed that nauseating article. No dudes setting up strawperson versions of the intelligent criticisms I’ve seen of the show get to call their work the “definitive…feminism post” pretty much ever. The thing where he’s claiming feminist criticisms of the series have “ignored” Rory? Patently false. I do not understand dudes who defend / identify with whiny, entitled, unsympathetic Nice Guy Rory. Nearly everyone who I knew who was commenting on DW by end of Moffat’s first season was like “Rory is awful, let’s talk about something more interesting.” If people have stopped focusing on Rory it’s because AFAIK he’s consistently been gross from day one to now and they’ve gotten bored of reiterating that over the past few years. I’d like to kick Rory’s “sympathetic” masculinity’s teeth in, and replace it with masculinities that don’t treat women as a reward one deserves for hanging around long enough.

Give people “oh look, there is such a thing as someone who isn’t defined by their rape” and they ask to see more rape scenes.

Uh…no, go to hell? “This show used sexual violence and sexual traumas repeatedly as a plot device, by season’s end every woman character either had survived that or was dead, and it was mostly treated as trivial” is not the same as “more rape scenes plz.” Who the hell is he claiming made the latter argument? Fucking fucker.

This just in: Moffat still sexist, Moffat apologists still sexist and terrible, water still wet, news at eleven. FTR, Sandifer may have addressed some of this in the comments, but I did not bother to read them.